But democratic governments do not have the power to turn all autocracies
into democracies. Moreover, even democratic governments
remain obliged to serve the security and economic interests of their own
respective nations in an international realm that is still largely the anarchy described by Thomas Hobbes as “a perpetual and restless desire of
power after power.” Democracies, in other words, have no choice but
to carry on pragmatic relations with autocratic governments: signing
oil and gas deals with them, balancing less dangerous dictators against
more threatening ones, and the like. This inevitably exposes the West
to charges of double standards and deprives it of the moral high ground
that it would like to claim as a champion of freedom.